I was very worse for wear, emotionally speaking, today. I had a good cry, and baby girl saw me in this state. I waver between wanting her to see me in all my facets and understand that adults get upset too, but I also worry about stressing her out and placing undue worries on her sweet head, and so I try to hide it from her at times too.

She saw me covering my face and wiping away my tears.

She wanted to make me happy. She rubbed my back. She pulled me over to her toys and got me down to play with her.

My mind was weighing on me too much. I went to lie on the couch.

Soon she found me. She got a lip balm she has recently discovered, and promptly applied it to my lips.

Then she took her flowery-framed toddler sunglasses, and put them on my face, to make me, in her sweet words, “more happy.”

Next she took the throw draped over the couch, and covered me in it. By this stage I was feeling better with all of this attention, and was starting to lap up her dedication to the cause.

She then lay down next to me under the throw, and we cuddled there on the couch, while the wild weather that has been shocking Spring, unleashed through the windows outside.

She sat up, a thoughtful look on her face. I was about to launch into a gentle spiel of how big people can also get upset sometimes, just like little people, but decided to ask her a question first.

“What are you thinking baby girl?”

A pause.

“A toy.”

I actually burst out laughing. Here I was thinking she would be scarred from seeing her Mum so upset, and instead she was thinking of a God-damn toy.

I laughed, and she laughed with me, mimicking my airy/breathless/cackly laugh.

We went to the shops soon after.

This girl, wearing a Unicorn skirt on top of her trakkies, a Unicorn headband, sunglasses as if it were 30 degrees out (it was like, 3) and her Olaf band-aid on her forehead from where she had busted her head nicely days earlier from bashing it against a glass coffee table, got her God-damn toy.

She totally deserved it. She had literally saved me. If it weren’t for her, I would have been in that funk for a long, long, long, sad time.

You immediately thought I was grateful for getting a break from work, right?

WRONG.

I am so grateful today, that I was able to get a break, by going to work.

Yep. I’m hitting the gratitude game hard when I’m thankful for work on a Sunday. Let me explain.

I mentioned that yesterday was a difficult day for me. I was flat, lowly, and in my trakkies all day, having only left the house to walk down the driveway and wave off my sister in the late afternoon.

I was also physically unwell. I was really keen for it all to be over soon.

Soon came when I woke up at 5:30 this Sunday morning.

And I was ok. I was happy, even. I questioned myself at several moments throughout the work day, and realised that despite how low I had gotten yesterday, NOW I was actually quite, alright.

I felt really good actually.

How had this come about? Clarity? Hindsight? I can’t even put it down to a good night’s sleep, because baby girl woke me once throughout the night, I was struggling with too many covers at another point, and in total I probably had about 5 and a half hours of shut-eye.

Then I realised.

It was DISTANCE.

I had removed myself from the place where I had been so upset – our haven, our home, our security – and in doing so, stepped away and out of the problem.

Doing so made me feel fresh and bright-eyed again. The problem was still there. But now I could deal with it and take the steps necessary to move forward, with a level-head.

And often I find, when you have a problem and you throw yourself into something completely unrelated, i.e. work…. suddenly things seem much more manageable a couple of hours or so later.

Thank you work. You are actually my God-send, my relief, my break and my holiday, in so many, many, many ways.

I had a long moment of frustration this morning. There is an aspect of my life that I’m struggling with, that I’m unable to talk about at the moment – hopefully I’ll be able too, sometime in the future.

I walked into the bathroom about midday, and had to breathe. I didn’t physically cry, but there were tears in my eyes, I had tension all about me, and all I wanted to do was give up. Give up, give in, and let the sorrow wash over me like the crashing waves in the horizon.

But then something happened. A little voice, tiny tiny, made a noise in my head. And it was enough to snap me out of my disillusioned haze to ask “how is your day going to be?”

And in that moment, I decided my sadness was NOT going to rule. It was NOT going to be the defining moment, feeling or event, of the day.

Still, it was a bit of a Let It Goday. Elsa sings it about letting go of her powers that she’s been holding in and hiding from everyone for so long. But I was using the term to not care. To just be. To not think too much, to allow myself to over-indulge, be free, merry and stress-free.

After baby girl and I surprised Hubbie with a little visit at his work, we headed on down to Bayside for some retail therapy. I am mindful that I shouldn’t be purging the account in light of important renos that need to be made to the house soon, but still, a little focused spending was necessary.

I Let It Go when we had Maccas for lunch (I had a chicken salad, but still ‘helped out’ with her Happy Meal)

I Let It Gowhen she got yet another toy, a doll that she was so happy to hold and hug (wait for it…)

and finally, I Let It Go when we sat down for coffee and a babycino, and instead of just coffee, I also got cake mofos:

Yep, that’s her new doll, Rapunzel. By the way, I forgot to mention that I Let Her Go, and leave the house in costume, Rapunzel-style herself. Because when else in life do you get to leave the house as a princess? I totally would have done Wonder Woman today if it were at all acceptable.

So yes. A bit of food, a bit of drink, a bit of toys, a lot of costume… and IT DID make me feel better.

But that was my attitude too. Deciding ‘we’re going to move on from this. We are.’

It’s something everyone reading this blog has, and yet not many of us give thanks for it, often, or at all… that is until you go to a funeral.

Today I went to a funeral.

Nothing makes you humbler, brings you down to earth, sets your priorities, and shows you what really matters in life, like the death of someone you know. And when it is someone who had a young and loving family, and who still had so much more to see and live for, it is especially heartbreaking.

I don’t need to tell you the scenes: it was devastating. I broke down. Everyone did. And at the end of the day, driving to pick up baby girl from my parents place, I reached across and clutched Hubbie’s arm: “I love you so much.”

We should all be so, so grateful. I know I am. I am alive, I have my Life, and I have the blessing of having a Family – nothing could make me happier. I am the richest woman because I have that, and I could almost end this blog, this whole carcrashgratitude online journal, right here…

But I have so much more to be grateful for, and I will spend my life looking for all the ways.

I didn’t realise there was such a thing as a ‘sad surprise’ until it was staring me in the face early this morning.

It was a really weird feeling.

After spending 20 minutes going through work emails, at about 7:30 I headed on over to the communal kitchen with my cereal container and fruit to organise my breakfast. Alone in there, I set about getting a bowl, spoon, knife, and then opened my container with my weetbix inside….

And staring back at me was a note.

I just stared, shocked. I read it. And then I read it again.

I stood there, still waking up, still unsure of how to react to this surprising note Hubbie had left me.

After standing like that for what seemed like a while, I finally took out my phone and took a quick snap before anyone ventured in to see me photographing my dry breakfast biscuits.

It was this:

And my bittersweet feelings and confusion were so, because when I traced back the events of last night, I realised with a heavy heart, that Hubbie must have written the note and snuck it into my container…

before we had our very decent argument.

Sigh.

It made me so sad. I loved surprises like these. I lived for them. I do things like this for Hubbie, setting up unplanned events and leaving notes and gifts for him in places I know he’ll find them, sometimes to see his face when he discovers it, and other times with the knowledge that even though I’m not there, a smile will spread over his face and will touch his heart with the realisation that I’ve gone to such effort to make him happy, even when I am not around.

I couldn’t even enjoy the note properly, because as it was, we hadn’t really resolved anything from our disagreement. We had gone to bed dissatisfied and angry, and really it wasn’t a lovely way to go to bed on a Saturday night.

Still, I sat back at my desk with the note, my phone, and my breakfast, and messaged him a heartfelt thank you, expressing my surprise and love. Despite the fact we had not cleared the air, I was still touched.

And hours later at the end of my shift, when I got home, we solved things fairly quickly… that’s because we compromise well and choose peace, over our stubborn stances of being right… but maybe the note that ‘Future’ Hubbie left me had a role to play in that too.

It was as if ‘Future” Hubbie had gone back in time, planted that note to help ease our future woes, and then jumped back into the present to wait for the air to clear.

A bit Back to the Future-esque I know, but an interesting thought none the same.

It certainly explains why he added an ‘e’ to the end of ‘wait’… you know, ‘Future’ Hubbie rushing and all to leave the note before present-day SmikG and Hubbie walked in, making an unforgivable spelling error that all partners of writers should NEVER make.

But, I forgive him. The note. I had felt sad when I first saw it, but earlier as I dated it and tucked it away to keep forever, I cherished the thought of love and happiness that he put into it.